In
an article on Chaskor.ru yesterday, Artur Mulyukov and Kirill Zhuravlyov survey
what they describe as “someof the most mystical and dangerous places” in Moscow”
which the two journalists say in turn is one of the mostmysterious and anomalous
European cities” (chaskor.ru/article/moskva_misticheskaya_11895).

The two describe the legends
surrounding a black cat on Tverskaya, one that some residents swear appears
every midnight and others say was an inspiration for Mikhail Bulgakov’s
Behemoth in “The Master and Margarita.”They also say that elsewhere there are whole families of ghost cats.

Some of these ghosts are more
topical, Mulyukov and Zhuravlyov say.There is the case of a pre-1917 couple who built up their wealth only to
see it stolen away. When they discovered their loss, these greedy people fell
down dead, but their voices can be heard even now “Oh, my little money, my little
money” they are reporte to say in the dead of night.

But the most frightening ghost of
all can’t even be seen, the two journalists say. In front of Malaya Nikitskaya
Street, no. 28, near the Barricade metro, the sound of a car approaching can be
heard when it is completely quiet late at night.That car, residents say, is the limousine of
Lavrenty Beriya, Stalin’s notorious secret police chief.

According to neighbors, the car,
which they say sounds like a Soviet-era ZIL, can be heard stopping at Beria’s
door, releasing passengers and moving off.Some residents say they can hear the screams of “enemies of the people”
being tortured, but that is clearly an invention, the journalists say. The NKVD
man didn’t do torture at home.

But they add that the screams of
young women from the building that some nearby residents occasionally report
could be real: “Beria brought to his apartment not a few women, and some of
them against their will.”

Mulyukov and Zhuravlyov conclude
their brief article by noting that there are no many ghost tours in the Russian
capital for those who are interested. They suggest that it is “best not to joke”
about such phenomenon because those who do often come to unhappy ends. “The
most secure method for ghost hunters is literature, the Internet and a good
imagination.”

Staunton, October 31 – The Kremlin
has long talked about finding a unifying idea for Russia, but in fact the two
unifying ideas on offer are mutually exclusive, cannot be combined, and
threaten to drag the country into chaos, civil war and disintegration,
according to Aleksey Shiropayev.

One of these ideas, which seeks
secularism, democracy and federalism, unites the forces of modernization and
Westernization, the Russian regionalist writer says. “In essence, this is the
idea of a peaceful bourgeois-democratic revolution” and is being advanced by
lliberals, national democrats and the non-totalitarian left.”

The other, which wants to “hold
Russian in a permanently medieval state” in which the imperial state is
paramount and the population its subjects, is supported by “the forces of
regression and reaction” which are in power now and which know that if they
yield their power, they will lose their own raison d’etre (rufabula.com/articles/2013/10/30/what-unites-us).

This situation explains the second group’s
“hatred to the West as a civilized redoubt of democracy,” “its playing with
tsarism” ideologically, its “pathetic slogan of ‘a single and indivisible
Russia,’”and its use of the Russian Orthodox
Church as “a universal spiritual anesthetist.”

Russian society is deeply split as a
result, Shiropayev says, a situation which “of course is worse than the victory
of a bourgeois-democratic revolution, but all the same better than a civil war.”It is unstable given how much at odds the two
ideas are, “but what will happen next,” the regionalist writer says, “no one
knows.”

Russian leaders have been looking for a
single all-embracing and all-unifying idea for years, but “it is obvious that
all attempts of this kind have proved unsuccessful” because Russia is simply
too divided for that in terms of the values that its people have. And that
situation, acute a century ago, is only getting worse.

At the start of the 20th
century, the Russian Empire “entered into a decisive stge of crisis.” It had to
federalize itself or face disintegration like Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman
Porte. But the Bolsheviks by the use of terror held things together, and
despite “having lost enormous territories after August 1991, the Russian Empire
in essence has been preserved.”

“More than that, now [the Russian state]
openly declares its revaunchist goals and even seeks to expand its territory as
was the case in August 2008.” But even as the Kremlin does so, it has engaged
in an effort to find a unifying national idea, an effort that in the
circumstances is doomed to failure.

None of the unifying ideas or events
work effectively across the entire society: those who accept one set of ideas or
versions of ideas do not accept the others and vice versa. The regime cannot
use Stalin because too much is known about what he did, and even Victory Day
divides almost as much as it unites, Shiropayev argues.

As far as the Russian Orthodox Church is
concerned, it has not become and will not gain “unqualified universal authority”
given its obscurantism. And tsarism, “nostalgia for which [the regime] is now
promoting” for “the moral strengthening of Putin authoritarianism,” is
offputting to many interested in a more open Russia.

This fundamental conflict is very much
on view in the arguments over hat a new single school history textbook should
look like, one that would seek to present Russian history as a single unified
flow. Some divisions like that between the Reds and the Whites can be overcome “on
an imperial basis” bcause both sides believed in that, albeit in different ways.

But it won’t be possible to fuse
together Novgorod and Moscowbecause they represented “two completely different
civilizational choices.”In the official
Moscow history, Novgorod with its democracy and Western ties remains a
threat.And it won’t be possible to
unite Leontyev with Pobedonostsev or Stalin with Vlasov.

In reality, Shiropayev writes, “the authorities
can fashion a universal conception of Russian history only by minimizing the
components of Russian freedom.” That they won’t do because “the current
imperial power simply by its nature isnot capable of offering society another
Russian hstory besides the history of the state” and that won’t unite the
country.

If Russia is to move forward, it needs a
new conception of history, one that will be “the history of the liberation
struggle of the peoples of Russia,” with stress not on the names of tsars and
secretaries general but on those of the many in Russia’s regions who have fought
for democracy and a genuintely federal Russia.

In an ideal world, such a history would
be based on the idea of Russia as “a secular democratic federation,” one that
would allow Russia to become “a Russia for all, Russians and non-Russians,
believers and unbelievers.” But unfortunately it is impossible to combine this
idea with those of Zyuganov, Zhirinovsky and Putin.

The opposition of such people to a new
history is easily explained: “the nomenklatura-chekist caste knows very well
that in such a Russia it would in the best case face lustration.” Consequently,
these people seek to defend themselves behind the ramparts of reaction and
obscurantism.

And the unified history they seek is
thus about only one thing: the latest effort to find “yet another instrument
for the enslavement of society.”

The situation is truly “pathetic,”
Shiropayv continues.Despite all the
power of the side of reaction, it is “not in a position to put down advanced
society,” even though that society is not yet in a position to cast aside the
reactionary powers. Instead, there are today, “two Russias, two societies, and
they cannot (or almost cannot) be connected by system values.”

Faced with this situation, the Kremlin
is trying to play a game of divide and rule, setting “the simple people”
against “the creative ones,” “the poor provinces” against “rich Moscow,” even
as it engages in discussions about “a unifying idea,” discussions that in the
context of the real divides in Russian society are leading to extraordinarily “dangerous
speculations.”

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Staunton, October 30 – A writer for
the official newspaper of the Russian parliament says that today “the most
important question” for residents of the Russian Federation is “what’s your
nationality?” a question that is not easy for everyone to answer but one which
is asked with such insistence that those of mixed nationality are regularly
urged to carry their internal passports.

But the increasing “nationalization”
of Russian life is having an impact on the residents of that country even if
they are not personally caught up in violent conflicts, an impact that is
discussed by Nadezhda Arabkina who is a commentator on social issues for the Parlamentskaya
gazeta (pnp.ru/comment/detail/40316).

In an article titled “The Most
Important Question – What’s Your Nationality?”Arabkina notes that she has a
particular problem in that regard: her father is an ethnic Korean and her
mother is an ethnic Russian. Consequently, there are equal chances she could be
“the victim” of nationalist skinheads or immigrants from Central Asia or the
Caucasus.

To be convinced of this, she says,
she doesn’t even have to leave her multi-national apartment building. Some
neighbors are convinced that she is not Russian, while others are certain that
she is. Some respect national traditions and differences, but some
unfortunately do not.

But the explosion of media coverage
of inter-ethnic clashes has exacerbated the situation, with ever more people
being conscious of their own group, worried about threats from others and thus
becoming hostile to them. Not surprisingly, some of the results would be funny
if they weren’t so tragically sad, Arabkina suggests.

One graduate of Moscow State
University’s philosophy faculty, whose mother was a Lithuanian, not long ago
told an immigrant to the Russian capital that he should “get out of my city.”He clearly “does notwant to think about it now, but other people
sometime cried these same words at his grandfather and grandmother.”

In another case, she says, someone
who is “half Tatar” but was baptized by his ethnic Russian mother in a Lipetsk
village “suddenly became to demonstratively purchase halal” goods and go the
mosque, but didn’t bother to “remove the cross” he had always worn.

And in a third more serious case, an
ethnic Armenian resident of Moscow who had never lived in Armenia wants to get
married to an ethnic Russian woman but is getting threats from her former
husband, a Daghestani. The issue is being resolved through the diaspora but for
the time being, the young woman is carrying a pistol.”

Thus, Arabkina
continues, there is now “a trend” – to “survive” one must join one’s own
national camp. Some of her Korean friends, she says, “who do not know any language
except Russian” are nonetheless put off when they learn that her husband is of “a
different nationality.”It would be
easier, she is told, if she would get involved “in Moscow’s Korean community.”

“Every morning since the pogrom in
Biryulevo, she writes, “I have heard one and the same thing: ‘Take your
passport with you!’” Her family members are concerned that without it, she will
be identified as an illegal immigrant, and indeed, policemen have challenged
her, often asking indirect questions to get at the issue of nationality.

One, for example, asked her whether
she lived in Moscow. When she said yes, he asked where the Minin and Pozharsky
monument is, something every native would know. When she responded that it was
next to the execution place in Red Square, the policeman said that “everything
is clear.”

Arabkina says that a Tajik woman
cleans her apartment, but she knows little or nothing about that woman’s life. “How
is she paid? Where does she live? How many relatives does she feed with her
earnings?I’m not interested. For me, it
is convenient and pleasing that she with gratitude takes my cash and smiles at
me as if I had given her a million.”

Near her apartment, the
parliamentary newspaper commentator says, there is a school whose almost half
of the students in the first class are not ethnic Russians.The teacher told her that there are so many
nationalities that the school even has an ethnic German.But she said one student doesn’t know his nationality.
“I think he is a Tajik or an Uzbek,” the teacher said.

What a happy child, Arabkina
concludes, “how simple his life is without these unending discussions about the
nationality question and the national idea.”But she leaves the impression that for her and those about her, those
are “the most important questions” and that in the future, they will be for
that child as well.

Staunton, October 30 – Both moderate
Tatar nationalists in the World Congress of Tatars and the Kazan Institute of
History and more radical ones found in the All-Tatar Social Center, the Azatlyk
Youth Movement, and the Ittifaq Party are increasingly promoting pan-Turkic
ideas like the formation of an Idel-Ural republic including the lands between
the Volga and the Urals.

While at one level, this article
looks like an attempt to curry favor with Moscow by pointing out that
intellectuals and political activists in a republic are threatening the
territorial integrity of the country, at another, it is very much a plea by a
Bashkir writer for Moscow to support his nation and other smaller ethnic groups
lest they be absorbed by larger ones.

Tatarstan’s turn toward pan-Turkist
ideas reflects not only an act of rediscovery, he says, but also Turkey’s
geopolitical strategy and the increasing presence of Turkish organizations in
that Middle Volga republic: There are now 278 joint Turkish-Tatar firms in
Tatarstan, Turkish investment there totals two billion US dolars, and trade
turnover is running at one billion US dollars a year.

In addition, Badranov continues, since
January 2013, there has been a Turkish center in the Kazan Federal University,
and TURKSOY, the international Turkish cultural organization, has declared
Kazan to be”the capital of the Turkic world” for 2014.

But the best evidence of the convergence
of Tatar nationalist goals and Turkish ideas was provided by the October 12
commemoration of the anniversary of Ivan the Terrible’s sacking of Kazan in
1552.This year, that meeting attracted and
drew support from representatives of nationalist groups from Chuvashia, Mari
El, and Bashkortostan as well as the Kazan Tatars.

Participants carried signs reading in
English “Freedom for Tatarstan!” and “Freedom for Ideal-Ural!” and others
reading in Tatar in Latin script “Idel-Ural will be free!” Such slogans and the
use of the Latin script directed as they are against the territorial integrity
of the Russian state cannot fail to cause concern, Badranov says.

On the one hand, despite Tatar efforts
to the contrary, the Russian government has a law that prohibits the use of
Latin script by non-Russian nations within the Russian Federation.And on the other, all talk about Idel-Ural, a
state that never existed Badranov says, serves “anti-Russian theories of a
pan-Turkist trend.”

Badranov also calls attention to a
calendar produced by the Azatlyk youth movement.For 2014, it identifies the anniversary of
the sacking of Kazan as a day of mourning, ignores Russia’s Victory Day, but
calls for celebrating the conquest of “this or that Russian city” by
foreigners.

The Bashkir scholar argues that the
Tatar nationalists have aproblem
because their rewriting of history contains “mutually exclusive” claims, something
he suggests Moscow must counter because the ongoing “ethnicization of history is
fraught with its politicization” and could lead many to conclude that Russia
and Idel-Ural are moving in two very different directions.

According to Badranov, “elements of
Tatar separatism basedon extremely doubtful theoretical constructions” can
increasingly be seen. “It is difficult to predict,” he continues, “the extent
to which Tatar nationalists will shift from words to deeds and how much support
they will receive from the mass population.”

“However,” the Bashkir writer insists, “it
is obvious that the population of the republic and the Tatar populationof
neighboring regions ever more actively is being drawn into the framework of
this propaganda and a certain part is becoming a bearer of the idea about the unity
of the Turkic space,” all the more so because of the work of Tatar media.

In the event of “a social-political
crisis in the Russian Federation,” such ideas “potentially are capable of
assembling around themselves definite strata of the Tatar population in
Tatarstan and neighboring regions,” something that would threaten both the
titular nationalities of these regions and the constitutional system of the Russian
Federation.

Among these groups are the Mishars,
Teptyars, the Nogays, and Bashkirs, and Tatars in Perm Kray and Astrakhan,
Samara,Saratov, Chelyabinsk, Omsk,Tomsk, and Ulyanovsk oblasts, and, Badranov adds, “what is particularly
important for Bashkortostan,” the situation of the so-called “’western’”
Bashkirs who are linguistically especially close to the Kazan Tatars.

Unless these groups are supported and
unless the ideas of Idel-Ural and other pan-Turkic ideologies are countered, he
concludes, all these groups are at risk of being absorbed into a common
Idel-Ural identity and ultimately into a common Turkic one, developmentsthat
would destabilize the Russian Federeation.